Exploring the Multi-Stage Effects of Material Preparation and Printing on 3D Printing Product Quality

3D printing is a promising technique to fabricate flexible parts and reduce the supply chain. Various materials, such as metal powders, plastics, ultraviolet (UV) sensitive resins, can be fabricated from 3D printing and form the final printed part. Currently, most researchers either focus on exploring printable materials with good property or focus on the process quality control given a certain type of material. However, for many 3D printing processes, the printing process and product properties are dependent on both the material properties and process settings. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the quantitative analysis of the interactions of material properties and printing process settings are rarely studied. In this paper, we treat the material preparation and 3D printing as different manufacturing stages, and we explore the multi-stage effects in 3D printing. In particular, we add carbon fiber to the CLEAR resin to alter the material properties for a stereolithography (SLA) 3D printing process. It is observed that the part properties are jointly affected by material properties and printing process settings. Therefore, the material property and process settings should be jointly considered for optimizing 3D printing processes.